Carpinteria 2012 - The saga continues

Another year of Carpinteria with the Cole family, after the long and hideous drive we ended up sleeping in Annie's tent, we were testing out how it will work to be room mates with Annie. :) I would say it went pretty well, I could see us being room mates. So of course the first day we hung out at the beach all day playing in the freezing water. You know how if you play in cold water for a long time, your body adapts to the temperature, well I will tell you from experience this time my body didn't adapt to the water temperature. It was still a lot of fun though. Later on the afternoon we got to see the farewell tour of the Space shuttle Endeavor. It flew right over us, it was flying into LA to be dropped off at a museum. As the day ended we all cleaned up and put on our shirts, this year's theme was Star Wars, everyone did a good job on their shirt. It was supposed to be a contest but nobody said who won but we all know who won..... I did. We did all the normal things that we do at Carpinteria, sit by the fire, play games, go into town to go to our famous candy shop, Robitaille's, waking up early and walking down to the seals and of course lots of relaxing. Overall it was wonderful trip as always. We look forward to it every year. See you next year Carpinteria!

Laboring in Utah

For Labor Day we took a little road trip up to Utah to visit a couple National parks.  We camped in Moab with my brother, Robert, and my cousin and his wife, Kody and Heather.  The drive seemed like it took forever to get there but all of us got to the campsite about the same time, I think it was 10:30 our time.  Since Melanie and I are expert campers we had no problem setting up the tent in the dark.
Our first day of the trip was spent in Arches National Park.  We decided to start off by hiking to Delicate Arch.  Robert and Kody had hiked it before and they told us about what we dubbed "The Devil's Backbone", which is the part of the hike where you go uphill on a sandstone slab, with no shade, for what seemed like 5 miles.  Even though the entire hike is only 1.5 miles.  Here is a picture of it.

We were in good spirits before we ascended the beast.

But the view from the top was well worth the hike.

We went on a few other short hikes and had lunch in the park, while the others went to go play in the Colorado river.  Arches turned out to be a lot more impressive than either of us though it was going to be.

Double Arch

Us sitting inside the 2nd arch

We spend the morning of the second day exploring a little bit of Canyonlands National Park.  That park is spit up into 3 or maybe 4 different geographical areas.  We went to the one closest to Moab called, Island in the Sky.  The entrance for the Needles section of the park is a little over an hour South of Moab, we'll have to go back and check that one out one day.  The part of canyonlands that we went to seemed like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon.  There were some scenic vistas but nothing else really to write home about....

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the river.  Melanie and I swam across it to practice in case we ever get stuck down in Mexico and have to swim the Rio Grande back into America.  All in all it was a pretty fun little weekend trip.

Our Campsite

The River

The River with better light

The happiest day of the California public school system....

This post will mostly be pictures, but Nikki Chase has graduated from high school. She is the last of the Chase kids to graduate from high school. This mean for my parents no more seminary, parent teacher conference, back to school night, attendance of extra curricular activities. I would say my parents are pretty excited right now for their new life. Nikki will be attending BYUI starting in January. Congrats to Nikki!!!

Posted by Melanie